Thursday 4 November 2010 03.00 EDT
First published on Thursday 4 November 2010 03.00 EDT

Like all burly broadcasters, Chris Moyles has often suffered the easy jibe about having a face for radio and the DJ has never achieved equivalent success on TV. This week, though, he is clocking up more screen-time than the smoothest and prettiest anchorman: 18 and a half hours, if you add to the new series of Chris Moyles's Quiz Night (Channel 4) the daily invitation to watch, via the red button, a live visual transmission of his Radio 1 breakfast show, touring the UK under the slogan "Access all areas".

He is not, though, the first of the corporation's morning presenters to be heard and seen. More than 30 years ago, in an experimental precursor to the BBC's move into breakfast television, the Today programme, with Brian Redhead and John Timpson, briefly had the cameras in. Watching people reading pieces of paper into microphones was judged dull, but the online era, when radio shows have websites and often webcams, has revived the desire to make the wireless work for eyes as well as ears.

The Moyles project was sold as providing a look behind the scenes, including what happens when the records are on. But it was soon apparent that the team were providing sanitised banter for the cameras. When Moyles was told that Lily Allen's Smile had been dropped from the running order, he asked why. The squirming producer said he could only tell him the reason (presumably the sad news in that day's papers of the singer's latest failed pregnancy) when the cameras were off. Access some areas, then.

These double broadcasts have also reiterated the risk of merging radio and TV, which is that the primary experience is weakened. Those who were merely listening had the feeling of hearing a good party through next door's walls, as Moyles directed the cameras or mugged into them.

Some of it, though, they were lucky to miss. The red-button audience got to see the presenter waving his backside in the face of one of his team to make a point. An arse for radio, you felt.